The first mass-produced Soviet heavy bomber, the four-engine TB-3, had been tested in the air, but Voroshilov reported (“Dear Koba”) that just four had been manufactured, and that even these had malfunctioning radiators.243 He also had to inform Stalin about a shocking number of crashes in training: eleven aircraft downed just between June 5 and 20, killing thirty crew members. Voroshilov asked permission to join Stalin for a few days down south (“I have not been sleeping normally for a long time”). Stalin wrote back on June 24: “The most worrisome are the crashes and the deaths of our aviators. The loss of airplanes is not as scary (the hell with them) as the loss of living people, aviators. Live human beings are the most valuable and most important thing in our entire cause, especially in aviation.”244, 245
Regional party bosses gathered in Moscow on June 28, 1932, and Molotov read out Stalin’s stern letter (sent ten days earlier): “In Ukraine, despite a harvest that was not bad, a number of districts with good harvests turned out to be in a state of ruin and famine.”246 This was the second known documented instance when Stalin used the word “famine” (golod).247 Molotov and Kaganovich approved only a slight reduction in procurements.248 Stalin, in two telegrams (July 1 and 2, 1932), spewed venom on Ukraine’s leadership (“demobilizers”) and ordered both of his top minions to attend Ukraine’s upcoming party conference.249 At that gathering (July 6–9), Kosior (a USSR politburo member) pointed out that some regions were already starving, while Ukraine government head Vlas Chubar (a candidate USSR politburo member) challenged Molotov and Kaganovich to go out and see for themselves.250 Afterward, Kaganovich wrote to Stalin that “all members of the [Ukraine] politburo . . . spoke in favor of lowering the plan” for deliveries, but “we categorically turned aside a revision.”251
Then, on July 24, Stalin undermined their hard work. “Our governing directive that the grain collection plan for the USSR be fulfilled unconditionally is correct,” he wrote to Kaganovich and Molotov. “But bear in mind that an exception must be made for the districts in Ukraine that have suffered especially. This is necessary not solely from the point of view of justness, but also in view of the special condition of Ukraine and its common frontier with Poland.”252 The next day, he again tried to explain his turnabout, suggesting that at the time of the Ukraine party conference he had not wanted “to derail the grain procurements.” What Kaganovich and Molotov made of Stalin’s zigzagging remains unknown. Stalin was banking on the harvest, whose “prospects,” he wrote, “will become clear (they have already become clear!): they are doubtless good for the USSR as a whole.” But the harvest was being overreported, and Stalin latched on to what he wanted to hear.253
Sown acreage had shrunk noticeably. Tractive power, seed grain, and fodder were scarce. The spring sowing season had proved short, and wheat sown beginning in late May always produced lower yields and was more susceptible to August rains, which would descend torrentially as early as the beginning of the month. Rust epiphytotics damaged a significant part of the wheat harvest, to the surprise of officials who had failed to identify it.254 Demoralized farmers forced into collectives were threshing and using manure sloppily and showing disregard for collectivized animals.255 Voroshilov had been granted his holiday, and on July 26 he wrote to Stalin about what he saw traveling south: “a scandalous infestation of the grain with weeds” in the North Caucasus.
The defense commissar appeared to be buckling under the pressure, complaining that “when one sees our military cadres, it is enough to make one a misanthrope,” and adding: “I cannot even say that these people do not work; on the contrary, they work until they are exhausted, but with no results.”256 Stalin kept up the pressure. “Six bombers for the Far East is nothing,” he responded (July 30). “We need to send no fewer than 50 to 60 TB-3s. And this needs to be done as soon as possible. Without this, the defense of the Far East is only an empty phrase.”257
An OGPU report to the “Central Committee” (August 1, 1932) estimated rifles at just 85 percent of needs, stationary machine guns at 68 percent, hand grenades at 55, revolvers at 36, modernized howitzers at 26 percent, 107-millimeter shells at 16 percent, and 76-millimeter shells at 7. Only a third of the projected 150 divisions could be fully outfitted.258 Nonetheless, that same day, the politburo confirmed Kuibyshev’s recommendation to reduce capital investments by a whopping 10 percent—more than that in heavy industry. Orjonikidze exploded. Kaganovich sought to conciliate him (“My friend, the financial situation required it”) while making clear that Stalin had signed on (“We wrote to our chief friend, and he thought it absolutely correct and timely to make cuts”).259 In mid-August, yet another Chinese commander resisting the Japanese managed to flee to Soviet territory, but the Japanese army pursued him. The war minister in Tokyo was said to have been barely restrained from launching an attack on the USSR.260
SUMMER DOOM
Telegrams, letters, and reports swamped Sochi with news of mass death of horses, mass failure to sow crops, mass starvation, mass flight from collective farms, and a bewildering lack of government response.261 Andrew Cairns, a Scottish Canadian agricultural expert sent by the Empire Marketing Board, in London, to determine if Western farmers might learn something from Soviet collectivization, managed to travel around Ukraine, Crimea, the North Caucasus lowlands, and the Volga valley from May through August 1932, and he observed women pulling up grass to make soup. Of urban canteens he noted, “As each worker finished his meal there was a scramble of children and one or two women and men for their soup plates to lick, and their fish bones to eat.”262 Throughout August 1932, unsigned editorials in Pravda lashed out at kulak “machinations” and grain “speculators.”
Stalin also received reports that “spoilage” was exaggerated and that grain was being stolen from slow-moving freight trains or slipped into ample pockets during mowing, stacking, or threshing, or just not being gathered (remaining in the fields to be eaten). He insisted to Kaganovich that just as private property under capitalism was sacred, so state property under socialism had to be recognized as “sacred and inviolable.”263 The dictator drafted a law, issued on August 7, 1932, that imposed the death penalty for the minutest theft of collective farm grain.264 He congratulated himself (“It is good”) and ordered a follow-up secret directive on the law sent to party organizations.265 Pravda (August 8) placed the pitiless law on an inside page; Kaganovich corrected this the next day with a front-page editorial.266 Other articles called for firing squads no matter the size of the theft. (One could view the compulsory state grain procurements—paying a mere 4.5 to 6.1 rubles per 100 kilos of rye, and 7.1 to 8.4 rubles for wheat, below production costs—as a form of grand theft, even as this enabled black bread to be sold in cities for just 8 to 12 kopecks a kilo.)267 Some politburo members had objected to the law in draft, but in reporting the objections to Sochi, Kaganovich had omitted names.268
Stalin exploded at Kaganovich (August 11) over fresh requests from Ukraine to lower procurement targets yet again. “Things in Ukraine have hit rock bottom . . . about fifty county party committees having spoken out against the grain procurement plan, deeming it unrealistic. . . . This is not a party but a parliament, a caricature of a parliament.” He demanded removal of Kosior and Chubar, and the demotion of Ukraine OGPU chief Redens. “Bear in mind that Piłsudski is not daydreaming, and his agent network in Ukraine is much stronger than Redens or Kosior think,” Stalin noted. “Also keep in mind that the Ukrainian Communist party (500,000 members, ha-ha) contains quite a few (yes, many!) rotten elements, conscious and unconscious Petliurites [a reference to the civil war Ukrainian nationalist], even direct agents of Piłsudski. If things get worse, these elements will not hesitate to open a front inside (and outside) the party, against the party.” Stalin warned direly: “Without these and similar measures (economic and political strengthening of Ukraine, in the first place in its border districts and so on), I repeat, we may lose Ukraine.”269